


Between Bruised Fingers

by patternofdefiance



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Changing Friendship, Developing Relationship, Friendship, Smoking, post reunion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-14
Updated: 2013-03-14
Packaged: 2017-12-05 07:01:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/720185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patternofdefiance/pseuds/patternofdefiance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>inspired by partyelk's textpost on tumblr: cigarettes between bruised fingers</p>
    </blockquote>





	Between Bruised Fingers

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by partyelk's textpost on tumblr: cigarettes between bruised fingers

Sherlock’s fingers are mottled shades of red, yellow, purple, a crush of colours. His eyes are ringed in dark. When he goes to light the cigarette, he winces, thumb unable to flick the lighter into life.

“Here,” John murmurs, does it for him.

Sherlock watches him closely, takes a drag that sets his eyelids fluttering. He makes a surprised sound when John’s fingers take the cigarette next, lifts his eyebrows when John takes a drag, lips so pinched it’s more like a sip of smoke.

“Since when…?” Sherlock nods at John, who exhales stiffly, hands back the fag.

John looks away.”While you were gone. I…sometimes I’d light one. Like incense.” He shrugs, smiles tightly. “Helped me sleep, that lingering acridity. Like an experiment was going wrong or right in the next room.”

Sherlock blinks. Takes another deep lungful. “I quit, you know.” He regards the ember’d tip, frowns at it. “Properly. While I was away.” He holds the cigarette out to John, who shakes his head ‘no.’ “Helped me remember home - You and Mrs. Hudson always on about my health. Barely ate or slept for weeks at a time, but at least I wasn’t smoking.” He barks a laugh, runs a bruised palm across his face.

“Going to start again?”John asks.

“Well…only if you keep telling me to stop.” The smile in his eyes colours the lines of his mouth, the angle of his cheek bones. It bruises a softness into the hollows of his face, the surprising fullness of his lips. 

John had been expecting a harder Sherlock, a distant Sherlock - a man who could lie to him, pretend to be dead for years, expect to take up again upon his resurrection.

This softness, this vulnerability, this exposed quick of a man, however... John swallows, looks away, then back. He reaches over, snags the cigarette from Sherlock’s lips, and chucks it into a puddle of yesterday’s rain.

“Don’t you know those things will kill you?” he chides, and Sherlock’s smile bleeds into his mouth finally, and into John’s as well.


End file.
